Health Connections

Electronic Health Records are a new technology that will soon be nearly universal in the United States. But a watchdog group says they need some fine tuning first.

Electronic Health Records are being strongly promoted as something every patient should have within the next few years. But as this new technology becomes widespread, there are some important ideas and functions it needs to incorporate. Some of these have been enumerated in the nine principles for electronic health information exchange that have been developed by Consumers Union and a host of other organizations concerned with patients rights, consumers rights and civil rights. Mark Savage, a senior attorney with Consumers Union, explains that one of those principles is "universal design."

Even with the shortcomings that the principles have been designed to address, Savage says that electronic medical records already represent a big advance over the analog version—paper.